How to Equip Your Team to Set Great Goals

In today’s episode of the Leader Fluent Podcast, I’m talking about “How to Equip Your Team to Set Great Goals.” We’re going to look at five questions to ask to give you the green light on your goals. Not only are these great questions to ask yourself, but they’re great questions to help you equip your team to set great goals. 

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SHOW NOTES:

Goal-setting is designed to help us and our team make forward progress, both personally and organizationally. To help our team at 7 City Church set goals, I have a pretty particular goal-setting system. That system includes a one-page goal-setting worksheet that helps them set a clear, specific, measurable, and time-bound goal, as well as a specific action plan to reach the goal. 

But in addition to these common, goal-setting components, I also include five questions that help each staff member determine if they’re ready to START their goal. When we can answer “YES” to all five questions, then we know they’re ready to pursue the goal. I use the word START as an acronym to remember the five questions:

STRETCH: Will this goal stretch you?

Author Dave Anderson once said, “We are not at our best when life is too safe. In fact, too much certainty is cause for depression. Uncertainty keeps you alert, interested, and engaged.” That’s what “Stretch” is all about. It’s about setting goals that stretch you outside of your safe and secure comfort zone. By stretch, I’m not suggesting that team members should set “completely unrealistic” goals. What I do mean is that the goal should be something beyond what they’re currently doing. 

TASK: Is this goal within your job responsibilities?

In general, a team member’s goals should focus on the tasks you hired them to do. That’s why I include a section on our goal worksheet that lists their job responsibilities. This isn’t a detailed job description, but it’s a brief bullet point list of their six primary job responsibilities. Again, those six responsibilities don’t get into the nitty gritty…they are more like broad categories. 

ALIGNED: Is this goal aligned with our vision and priorities?

It’s not enough for goals to be in a team member’s job responsibilities. The goal must also be aligned with the overall vision, strategic priorities, and key result areas of the organization. Why? Because if it’s not, you’ll create sideways energy. 

With those three things in focus—vision, strategic priorities, and key result areas—team members write a brief description of how their goal contributes to at least one of them. This ensures the goal is aligned with the overall direction of the organization.

REACHABLE: Do the action steps for this goal make it reachable?

Without a clear action plan, team members risk setting goals that they cannot reach. Our goal worksheet provides a space for team members to list 5-7 action steps they would take to actually reach their goal. Then, when I review the action steps, one of the questions I’m thinking about is this: “How are these actions steps different than what they’re already doing?”

If what they’re planning to do to reach their goal is no different than what they’re already doing, then they’re not going to get an outcome that’s any different than the outcome they’re already getting. It’s the old saying, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” 

TIMING: Is this the right time to pursue this goal? 

Sometimes a team member can set a goal that will stretch them, it’s a task within their job responsibilities, it’s aligned with the organization’s vision and priorities, and their action plan is rock solid. The proble